In The Phoenician Scheme, industrialist Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro), one of the richest men in Europe, invites his only daughter, nun Liesl (Mia Threapleton), to become his heir on a trial basis. She arranges quarters for herself as humble as can be acquired within the walls of an Italian palazzo-style manor, with its trompe l’oeil marble walls and stacks of paintings by old masters left to gather dust in the hallways.
She sleeps in a cot bed, below an oil work of a young girl sat curled up in the grass. It’s by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. We’re shown the bed two or three times, and only in passing. But, as the film’s set decorator Anna Pinnock assures me, it was supplied with a “thick mattress with real horsehair”, custom-made using traditional techniques, and then fitted with “old linen from French markets that we cut up and remade”.
